Atheism is.. (kort dikt)

[Huginn]

Atheism is..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCUYiflkXHc

Videoen anbefales, en som leser det.

 

Atheism offers nothing to me,

it never has and never will,

it doesn't make me feel good or comfort me,

it's not there for me when I'm sick or ill,

it won't intervene in my times of need or protect me from hate,

it doesn't care if I fail or succeed,

it won't wipe the tears from my eyes,

it does nothing when I have no where to run,

it won't give me wise words or advice,

it has no teaches for me to learn,

it can't show me what's bad or nice,

it's never inspired or excited anyone,

it won't help me fulfill all my goals,

it won't tell me to stop when I'm having fun,

it's never saved one single soul,

it doesn't take credit for everything I achieve,

it won't make me get down on bended knee,

it doesn't demand that I have to believe,

it won't torture me for eternity,

it won't teach me to hate or despise others,

it won't tell me what's right or wrong,

it can't tell nobody not to be lovers,

it's told no one they don't belong,

it won't make you think life is worth living,

it has nothing to offer me, that's true,

but the reason Atheism offers me nothing is because I've never asked it to,

Atheism offers nothing because it doesn't need to,

Religion promises everything because you want it to,

You don't need a Religion or to have faith,

You just want it because you need to feel safe,

I want to feel reality and nothing more,

Atheism offers me everything,

but Religion has stolen before.

 

Av Richard Coughlan

[Jarmo]

Den er grei, men hva skal vi diskutere om i denne tråden?

[SupremeX]

Ateisme lærer Richard Coughlan å forholde seg til realiteten, med andre ord?

[Huginn]

Hadde litt lyst til å dele diktet, det var jo knallbra. ;p

 

Jeg lurte mest på litt reaksjoner, hva folk synes om det? Er vel i og for seg en vanlig OP, bare i diktform.

[Skjelvgråt]

Dere burde lese "The dragon in my garage" http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm

[RWS]

Gjengir det i sin helhet:

The Dragon In My Garage

by Carl Sagan

 

"A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage"

 

Suppose (I'm following a group therapy approach by the psychologist Richard Franklin) I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

 

"Show me," you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle -- but no dragon.

 

"Where's the dragon?" you ask.

 

"Oh, she's right here," I reply, waving vaguely. "I neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon."

 

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.

 

"Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."

 

Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

 

"Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."

 

You'll spray-paint the dragon and make her visible.

 

"Good idea, but she's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick." And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won't work.

 

Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so. The only thing you've really learned from my insistence that there's a dragon in my garage is that something funny is going on inside my head. You'd wonder, if no physical tests apply, what convinced me. The possibility that it was a dream or a hallucination would certainly enter your mind. But then, why am I taking it so seriously? Maybe I need help. At the least, maybe I've seriously underestimated human fallibility. Imagine that, despite none of the tests being successful, you wish to be scrupulously open-minded. So you don't outright reject the notion that there's a fire-breathing dragon in my garage. You merely put it on hold. Present evidence is strongly against it, but if a new body of data emerge you're prepared to examine it and see if it convinces you. Surely it's unfair of me to be offended at not being believed; or to criticize you for being stodgy and unimaginative -- merely because you rendered the Scottish verdict of "not proved."

 

Imagine that things had gone otherwise. The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch. Your infrared detector reads off-scale. The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you. No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons -- to say nothing about invisible ones -- you must now acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way it's consistent with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.

 

Now another scenario: Suppose it's not just me. Suppose that several people of your acquaintance, including people who you're pretty sure don't know each other, all tell you that they have dragons in their garages -- but in every case the evidence is maddeningly elusive. All of us admit we're disturbed at being gripped by so odd a conviction so ill-supported by the physical evidence. None of us is a lunatic. We speculate about what it would mean if invisible dragons were really hiding out in garages all over the world, with us humans just catching on. I'd rather it not be true, I tell you. But maybe all those ancient European and Chinese myths about dragons weren't myths at all.

 

Gratifyingly, some dragon-size footprints in the flour are now reported. But they're never made when a skeptic is looking. An alternative explanation presents itself. On close examination it seems clear that the footprints could have been faked. Another dragon enthusiast shows up with a burnt finger and attributes it to a rare physical manifestation of the dragon's fiery breath. But again, other possibilities exist. We understand that there are other ways to burn fingers besides the breath of invisible dragons. Such "evidence" -- no matter how important the dragon advocates consider it -- is far from compelling. Once again, the only sensible approach is tentatively to reject the dragon hypothesis, to be open to future physical data, and to wonder what the cause might be that so many apparently sane and sober people share the same strange delusion.

 

Alt munner ut i å faktisk kunne klare å stå på egne ben og la være å stå på bena til et fantasi foster, enten det er en drage eller en gud.... Tørr å stå opp for deg selv, tørr å ta ansvar for ting du har gjort, dårlige som gode og æren for de gode tingene i livet. Tørr du det vil du oppdage hvor sterk du er og hvor deilig det er å klare seg selv! For ikke å snakke om hvor godt det er å frigjøre hjernen for storebror som ser deg